I have in a way also fulfilled a personal mission in this trip to the waters of the Philippine Republic. In 1898, my father was a Lieutenant in the Baltimore when Admiral Dewey defeated the Spanish Fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay. Subsequently, Dad spent several years campaigning against the Filipinos in their hopeless and heroic insurrection. From their point of view, they were fighting an American imperialistic scheme to take over where the Spanish had been forced to leave off, and although he fought against them, Father’s personal sympathies were always with the embattled Filipino farmers and their high-minded leaders. He became, in fact, acquainted with the head of the Philippine insurrection, Emilio Aguinaldo. As a boy, I remember the arrival of occasional letters to Father from this quondam national hero.
Although I am not very sure of the details, my recollection of the story is that during the initial confused stages of the insurrection, Father in some manner had arrested or captured a party of Filipinos, among whom was a young woman who turned out to be the wife of Emilio Aguinaldo. The rest of the party were apparently her protectors and servants. I am sure the United States government has long since forgiven Father [if indeed it ever knew of it] for the manner in which he handled this gratuitous “prize-of-war.” He escorted the entire party to the nearest Filipino post and bade Señora Aguinaldo a sweeping and courtly good-bye. Sometime later, Father was captured by Filipino guerrillas and detained for several hours, until peremptory orders arrived from some highly placed official that he be restored immediately to the American lines, which was done.
It should not be inferred from this yarn that the Filipino insurrection was a comic-opera war, for it was not. The Filipinos had been fighting the Spanish colonial government [a direct relic of Magellan’s landing] for several years before we got into the fight. They welcomed us with great joy, thinking our plans were the same for them as for Cuba, and that their independence was but a short time away. When they discovered that this was not our intention, at least, not at this time, with grief by some and fanatic fury by others, they commenced to fight against their erstwhile comrades. And yet, the Filipinos—most of their educated leaders anyway—knew that they were fighting the best friend their country ever had. If either war was a comic opera, it was the Spanish War, with its fake “assault” on the fortifications of Manila, not the Philippine insurrection, which was in deadly, pathetic earnest.
Saturday, 2 April 1960 0047 There is severe oscillation in our gyro repeaters, probably caused by something wrong with one or more synchro amplifiers. Shifted to direct gyro input to the helmsman and began to check out the synchro amplifiers. After some moments, the oscillations ceased and the situation reverted to normal. This may be a warning of trouble to come. With the oscillation gone, we are for the moment unable to determine what is the precise cause of the difficulty.
0135 Sonar contact on the starboard bow. A large ship, from the heavy beat of his propeller. Left him astern and lost contact after tracking him for some thirty minutes. He faded out as though a thermal sound layer had come between us.
0859 At periscope depth to fix our position prior to passing through the Pearl Bank Passage and then through Sibutu Passage into the Celebes Sea. Locating and passing through Pearl Bank Passage is somewhat like threading a needle. There is a difference, however. Should we miss the deep water hole between reefs, we have an excellent chance of digging a groove in the coral with our bow. The land is very low-lying hereabouts and it is difficult to detect by periscope or radar. A complication develops when a ship is sighted hull down on bearing 076° true, approximately 8 miles away. From course and speed it is quite possible that this fellow may be the one we detected on sonar seven hours ago. If so, we have run right past him. Very likely Triton and he are trying to thread the same needle. Proximity of the ship prevents us from raising our periscope as high as we might like, or using our retractable radar to fix our position accurately. The sea is nearly glassy; any unusual activity in the water would attract notice. Went deep, increased speed and headed for the presumed position of Pearl Bank Passage.
1130 Periscope depth again, land in sight more clearly, and we are now obtaining a rough position. Changed course to head for the presumed location of Pearl Bank Passage when again we sight the same ship, range now only seven miles, bearing 030° true.
1245 This ship is going to give us trouble. He is much higher out of the water than we, therefore can see better, and very likely he knows this area thoroughly. Although we have the speed on him, we must proceed slowly and with extreme caution, to be sure of our position before we try to run through the narrow Pearl Bank Passage. With no such problems, he has been overhauling us for the past several hours.
We believe we have Pearl Bank Passage pretty well defined now, bearing due south; and we have been steering south for about 45 minutes. We should, however, remain at periscope depth as we pass through the channel because of variable currents which the Sailing Directions say we may expect. Besides, Will says he still is not fully satisfied with the accuracy of our position. After thinking things over, it is apparent that our best bet is to let the ship precede us.
We therefore reverse course to the north to let him go first, exercising extreme caution with our periscope and swinging wide. Commander Joe Roberts and photographer Ray Meadows are in the conning tower ready to take pictures should any opportunities develop. The merchantman, a Victory freighter of World War II with black hull, white superstructure and a black-and-red shape on his funnel, goes by at range 3300 yards. We are able to take a few pictures as he passes.
1311 Changed course to 180° true to follow behind the freighter. This makes it easy.
1417 Sighted Pearl Bank Light bearing 234° true and obtained the first really good fix of the day.
1436 Commenced transit of Pearl Bank Passage.
1450 We are inside Pearl Bank Passage, taking occasional checks on our position by bearings of the lighthouse on the right and a point of land on the left. We are well behind the freighter and can use our periscope with relative freedom.
The first indication of trouble came when Chief Quartermaster Marshall suggests the situation may be propitious for obtaining a sun azimuth. Will has been doing this every day he can. It is good business to check the accuracy of our gyros and determine their errors as often as possible. The error can vary and there goes your dead-reckoning capability.
A low whistle from Marshall. “This can’t be right,” he comments. “This shows the azimuth is 6° off.” Calling to the navigator in the forward end of the conning tower. “Mr. Adams, are you sure you read the bearing right on the bearing repeater?”
“I think I did,” calls back Adams. “Maybe it is not following freely. Helmsman, mark your head!”
The helmsman, one of our new men, answers immediately, “Mark! One nine one, sir.” With the periscope aimed dead ahead, the bearing repeater should read exactly the same—and it does. Suddenly the pieces fall into place. I shoot a quick look at the rudder angle indicator alongside the helmsman. He has 20° right rudder on, but the ship’s course has not changed!
“Our gyro has gone out,” I call out.
Lt. George Sawyer happens to be officer of the deck. He has reached the same conclusion. “Up periscope!” he shouts.
The handles at the base of the steel tube come up; he grasps them; shouts “Lighthouse—bearing, mark! Left full rudder!”
There is no need for me to look through the periscope to know what George is seeing. When he called “Mark!” he was looking dead ahead. We are at least 90° off our course already, in a narrow channel. George is understandably startled by seeing the lighthouse in front when it should have been on the beam. The urgency in his voice tightens us all up in the conning tower.
With the ship once more on approximately the right heading, we shift steering control to the control room where the helmsman can use the master repeater, the only remote gyro indication we can trust right now.
It is a good lesson to all hands, one which I take pains to
expand on in night orders later that same day. It is our normal practice to check our gyro repeaters against the master and auxiliary compasses every 30 minutes. Yet the rapidity with which the situation developed shows us how much trouble we could have gotten into even with this procedure. We were fortunate that we caught the difficulty so quickly, but it was strictly accidental that Marshall thought of taking a sun azimuth at the time he did. Apparently he caught the incipient error when we had only gone six degrees off our course.
The real error was on the part of the helmsman, who should have realized that the ship cannot help turning if 20° rudder is put on. If you have 20° rudder on and you are not changing course, either your rudder or your gyro compass is not working, or something else very unusual is happening. The helmsman must become accustomed to seeing the ship respond ever so slightly to a tiny amount of rudder one way or the other; and if she does not, he should immediately initiate a check to see if anything is wrong.
In this instance the ship was never in danger, since we discovered the difficulty so quickly, and because our sonar equipment has been indicating the shoal water on both sides of Pearl Bank Passage, as it did in Hilutangan Channel; thus we would have known that we were approaching shoal water long before we got in trouble. Even so, the episode has a sobering effect.
1517 Cleared Pearl Bank Passage heading for Sibutu Passage and entry into Celebes Sea.
1856 Entered Sibutu Passage.
2036 Passed Sibutu Island abeam to starboard at about 7 miles.
2200 Passed into Celebes Sea; departed from waters of the Republic of the Philippines.
Sunday, 3 April 1960 1147 Entered Makassar Strait. Departed Celebes Sea.
1330 Sunday Service on schedule, led by Will Adams. Our attendance has increased somewhat—an encouraging sign. Will’s talk, “Have Made Passive Search, Hold No Contacts,” refers to the sonarman’s report made just before we bring the ship to periscope depth. He uses it to illustrate the point that life demands more than a passive search, and the lesson sinks home.
1422 Crossed equator for the third time this voyage at longitude 119°—05.1’ E. We are old hands now, and King Neptune just waves us by as we speed through his domain.
Monday, 4 April 1960 0613 Sighted a sailing vessel to westward. Joe Roberts’ eyes glisten as he evaluates the report. This is the kind of sailboat he has been hoping to photograph, a Makassar inter-island merchantman. As he passes nearby, Joe obtains what should prove to be excellent pictures.
0930 Completed photographing the Makassar merchantman. The vessel in many ways resembles a Chesapeake Bay schooner of a type I had seen many times from my room in Bancroft Hall at Annapolis. It is about 50 feet long, painted white, low in the water with a cargo resembling deck lumber. She has two masts with heavy booms and gaffs. There was also a rather heavy bowsprit and two good-sized jibs—a topsail was rigged between mast and gaff on both fore and main masts. At the stern of the ship was a rather strange outrigger affair, a sort of structure built well out from the stern to which the mainmast backstays are secured and from which the ship is steered. Two men could be seen aboard—one man standing aft on the outrigger, apparently steering the ship, and the other, evidently a deck hand, up forward. Neither one seemed to be aware of our presence, although during our photographic interlude they had passed rather closely and we were able to inspect them carefully.
Strangely, I seemed to recall having seen this schooner somewhere. It soon came to me: in an intelligence photograph taken in this very area during the war. It was indeed quite possible that this was the same sailing vessel, for some of them have been known to survive for a century or more. Steamers are a nondescript lot that wear out in a few years and change mightily in the process. But sailing ships seldom change, their rig seldom varies, until near the end. This is why old sailors can recognize without fail old sailing ships which they know well.
1700 Having come to periscope depth to get a fix on Balalo-hong Island Light, observed up ahead a great deal of splashing in the water; thought for a moment that we might have found the mythical sea serpent. It next appears to be a tide rip similar to one observed earlier today, but upon closer inspection it is evident that these are big fish and little fish, and that the little fish are having a hard time. Maneuvering to close and take pictures of the operation.
There are evidently at least three kinds of fish present. Nearest to us is a lazy group of porpoises swinging along and gamboling among themselves. Up ahead it is evident that the predatory fishes are probably porpoises also, and we cannot understand why the band close aboard is so unconcerned with the battle royal going on just ahead. Perhaps this is a different tribe. Try as we can to approach close enough to get a look at either group, however, we are unable to do so. Apparently they consider us an unwanted witness to whatever is going on. The lazy band of frisky porpoises avoids us by adroit maneuvers at the right time, while up ahead the fighting fish move steadily away and even the ones being eaten seem to co-operate in keeping us at a distance. It is a thrilling sight to see the sleek black bodies of the porpoises flashing around in the water. With their tremendously powerful tails working back and forth like pistons, they dash about at speeds reportedly between 20 and 30 knots. No telling how fast these lads are going, but they certainly seem to have a lot in reserve.
1749 Resumed base course and speed. Now transiting Flores Sea.
Tuesday, 5 April 1960 This morning, as we passed through the last shallow water areas before Lombok, a final try was made to fix our fathometer. Results were both success and failure—success on the theoretical plane, failure on the practical. Our second transducer, converted from a general announcing speaker, indeed produced a signal, and it did receive sounds transmitted through air or water. But like its predecessor, it could not penetrate the heavy steel of the ship’s hull.
We do, however, have one hole in the bottom of the ship—the garbage ejector. To use it, we first have to secure the fathometer head inside the garbage ejector, then shut the upper cap and open the lower door. Our first homemade transducer had been too large to fit into the garbage ejector, but our second attempt, constructed out of one of the ship’s regular announcing system speakers, fits into it neatly.
No luck at all, not even theoretical, attended this attempt. The speaker was put into the garbage ejector, connected up. All appeared well; but when the inner cap was secured, it dislodged the speaker, causing it to fall to the bottom of the garbage ejector where it became wedged sideways. For a time could neither fish it up nor get rid of it, and it looked as though we might have lost use of our garbage ejector and gained nothing. The situation was retrieved with expenditure of a great deal of effort, and the garbage ejector given a normal flushing, after which inspection showed that the modified speaker now rests somewhere in the Flores Sea.
0650 Approaching Lombok Strait to enter the Indian Ocean. Lombok Strait was one of the principal submerged highways for submarines based in Australia during the war. Situated between the islands of Bali and Lombok, it is one of the widest straits through the Malay Archipelago and is spectacular in that it has precipitous volcanic peaks on both sides. The water in the Strait is deep, but treacherous because of strong currents. During the war, there were reported cases of submarines spending hours at maximum sustained submerged speed only to surface at night and find that they had been going backwards. The Japanese knew that Lombok Strait was “Submarine Highway” and made efforts to close it. Generally, you could depend upon at least two patrol vessels being somewhere in the area and frequently there were more than that. Toward the end of the war, before the Japanese were pushed out of this area, they took to flying patrol planes back and forth also.
The last submarine sunk in the war, USS Bullhead, commanded by my Naval Academy and submarine school classmate and good friend E. R. (Skillet) Holt, Jr., was most likely destroyed here on 6 August, 1945. This was “Skillet’s” first patrol as skipper, after a number in lesser capacity. He had been ordered into the Java Sea, just nor
th of Java, and was due to transit Lombok Strait and enter his assigned area on the 6th of August, 1945. On that day, in position 8°—20’ S, 115°—40’ E, a Japanese patrol plane attacked a submarine, claiming two direct hits. The report went on to say that for ten minutes or more air bubbled to the surface and the water was slick with oil.
1030 Our position is exactly 8°—20’ South, 115°—40’ East.
The last time I saw “Skillet” was when we both graduated from submarine school on 20 December, 1941. Our careers paralleled each other; we arrived at the submarine school and achieved our first commands at approximately the same time. We departed for our respective first command patrols within a few days of each other; both of us were due to report to our new stations on the 6th of August, and on that very day both patrols were, in effect, terminated by bombs. In my case it was the bomb on Hiroshima.
While transiting Lombok Strait, we sighted several ships of various types. One was a small sailing ship similar to the one we had seen yesterday in Makassar Strait, except it had only a single mast. Later, at 0950, sighted 3 ships, apparently small Naval or Coast Guard craft, heading north up Lombok Strait.
In attempting to determine the course and speed of these last-sighted vessels we experienced considerable difficulty in fixing an accurate angle on the bow. Every time the periscope was raised for an observation, they seemed to be heading in a different direction. There was no indication of a search pattern or deliberately erratic steering, but no two of them ever got together on a course, and they were never seen heading in the same direction twice. Finally, after some time, they steadied out and proceeded past us up Lombok Strait on a steady course and speed. We forgot the problem until later.
During a period, relatively free from near contacts, the opportunity was seized to inspect Bali carefully. Bali is a spectacular volcanic mountain, now extinct. Viewed from Lombok Strait, it is perfectly symmetrical, in many ways similar to Mt. Fuji in Japan, but without a snow cap. According to the chart, however, Bali Peak is not quite as symmetrical as Fuji, for the northwestern side was blown off by an eruption a long time ago.
Around the World Submerged Page 24
